


restless nights

by shadowfell



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Platonic BDSM, but this is not that fic, yasha needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:02:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27608714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowfell/pseuds/shadowfell
Summary: Yasha, Caleb, and mutual poor decisions about using scenes in place of therapy.
Relationships: Caleb Widogast & Yasha
Comments: 1
Kudos: 27





	restless nights

**Author's Note:**

> For the kinkmeme prompt: Yasha/Any, BDSM as therapy
> 
> After that fight, I have an urge for Yasha deciding to find a (slightly) more healthy way to get herself beat up, with the help of her friends.
> 
> ++ yasha taunting whoever the dom is, trying to get them to lose control and just go to town on her (and I don't know if i'd like it more if it works or if it doesn't and the dom stays cool through all her taunts)
> 
> https://criticalkink.dreamwidth.org/3194.html?thread=1283706#cmt1283706

Yasha can't sleep.

If she wants, she can pretend it's the rocking of the boat. It isn't. She didn't have trouble sleeping, the first time they took to sea. She knows this restlessness would have hit her, wherever they were, it's just that here, on the boat, there's no pretense that she's staying up late to keep watch.

She could go up to the deck, to watch the edge of storm that threatens to come rumbling closer, in the distance, to help with rigging she no longer remembers how to work with. To have the eyes on her, watching, unknowing of everything she's done.

Yasha can't sleep, and she goes to the other person who can't sleep, who never can, not really, and she knocks on the door to Caleb's cabin.

He's still awake. He answers the door, bare of coat and holsters but otherwise still fully dressed. "Yasha," he says, surprised but not shocked.

"Are you busy?" she asks. 

"I was just reading," Caleb tells her. "Did you need something?"

"Do you remember the deal we had?" She doesn't quite step inside, even as he gives her the room to. 

That makes Caleb tilt his head. "The request I made of you," he says. "I am not the same as I was then. I don't expect to ask that from you again."

"I know," she says. "I wanted to ask you, this time."

He stares at her, with those sharp blue eyes. "For you to hurt me," he asks, "or for me to hurt you?"

His tone is even, unemotional. She's not sure what he would say, if she asked to hurt him, if he would agree with that same, even tone. It doesn't matter, in the end.

"For you to hurt me," Yasha says. 

"Ja, okay," Caleb says. "We should probably do this in your bunk?"

"Yeah," she says, crossing back across the ship. He follows, and shuts the door after him as they step into her room. It doesn't lock, exactly, but there aren't any other bunks this end of the ship, so she's not entirely certain it matters.

"I have not done this before, exactly," he tells her, calmly, hands fidgeting around a coil of rope he picked up. "What, specifically, do you want?"

"I want you to hurt me," she repeats, beginning to pull off her top. 

"If you wanted someone to pummel you into the ground," Caleb says, "you should have woken Beauregard.”

She could’ve woken Beau. She’s not sure how that conversation would’ve gone.

“What are your limits?” he asks.

“Do you think you could break me?” she asks him. 

He reaches out and grabs one of her wrists with a sharp twist. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s distracting, at least, for a moment. She waits for a retort, sees one almost form on the edge of his lips, but instead he takes the coil of rope and wraps it around both wrists, tightly. 

It would be a simple task, to break free of them, but instead she lets him pull the rope around one of the open beams of the ceiling, leaving her standing in the center of the small room, arms pulled tight and stretching. 

“Is this the best you can do?” Yasha asks. 

“No,” Caleb says. “Is that part of what you want? Talking?” 

“I want you to get started already,” she says.

He stands before her, holding the same cane she’d kept and used on him. He holds it by his side, not even poised to strike, and circles around her, slowly. She growls at him, the sound surprising her as it slips out of her throat.

The first hit hurts. Out of nowhere, square onto the shoulder. She doesn’t flinch, but it’s hard, sharp, leaves a welt that already starts to ache, slightly. She almost expects Caleb to ask her to count the hits. He always did, without ever being asked. 

Instead, he’s silent, with the next two hits, alternating sides.

“Hit me harder,” she says, and he doesn’t, keeping the same uneven pace as he hits lashes down her sides. 

When he switches to hitting her chest, he’s very careful, deliberate, with avoiding sensitive points. She growls out “Coward” and he doesn’t react, keeps that same level gaze, but spreads his strikes to cover ground he didn’t earlier. The pain is a dull thudding, and it drowns out everything outside this room, outside this moment.

The hits stop, eventually, and Yasha is left panting, holding onto the ropes to keep herself upright. She opens her eyes to meet Caleb’s. “Is that all you have?” she asks.

He slaps her across the face, and she’s about to taunt him, try and get him to put his whole weight behind the blows, when the rope goes slack, and suddenly, on uneven legs, she’s crashing to the floor. 

Caleb has a hand in her hair and pulls her head up before her face can slam into the ground. He holds her, like that, grip firm in her hair, and she smiles at him. 

“I’m going to slam you into the ground,” he informs her.

“Do it,” she says, and her whole world goes reeling once more, crashing down. It’s a deliberate fall, to avoid smashing her face into the boards, and for a moment, the whole world goes blissfully light. 

The ropes around her arms are gone, and a set of hands overlays hers, pressing to the side of her head. “Heal yourself,” comes a firm order, and she does. 

It feels warm, calm, rain upon her face in summer as thunder broils in the distance. Hands pull her up, shakingly, onto the bed, and she collapses, not caring about the sting from the lines across her back.

“Thank you,” she says.

“You could probably convince Beauregard to start training with you, in the evenings,” Caleb says, and his voice sounds impossibly distant for where it stands right beside her. 

She doesn’t respond. Already, she can feel sleep beckoning.

“Gute nacht, Yasha,” Caleb says, and shuts the door behind him.


End file.
